Maya Forest

The Maya Forest is a tropical moist broadleaf forest that covers much of the Yucatan Peninsula, thereby encompassing Belize, northern Guatemala, and southeastern Mexico. It is deemed the second largest tropical rainforest in the Americas, after the Amazon, with an area of circa 15 million hectares (150,000 km2), of which at least 3 million (30,000 km2) lie within protected areas.

Extent

The Maya Forest is considered 'the [second] largest remaining tropical rainforest in the Americas,' after the Amazon. It is widely deemed to cover much of the Yucatan Peninsula, thereby encompassing Belize, northern Guatemala, and southeastern Mexico, and stretching across protected and unprotected areas, and Crown (ie public) and private lands. This coincides with the original definition of the Forest as developed in 1995 for internationally-coordinated conservation efforts, namely, the contiguous tropical rainforest which housed the Classic Maya civilisation within the Maya Lowlands. Some literature, however, restricts the Forest's bounds to only contiguous rainforest within protected areas (eg the Maya Biosphere Reserve and abutting protected areas). Other literature, though, extends the Forest's bounds beyond the Peninsula, suggesting it stretches along the Gulf of Mexico littoral beyond the Isthmus of Tehuantepec to the west, and along the Bay of Honduras littoral along northern Honduras to the east.

History

Pre-Columbian

The Maya Forest is thought to have come into being after the Last Glacial Maximum circa 20,000 years ago. Prior to such event, an arid climate is thought to have predominated in the Maya Lowlands, leading to dry, open savannahs, rather than a tropical rainforest.

The earliest Palaeoindian settlers of the former Maya Lowlands would have encountered a burgeoning Maya Forest, and employed it to hunt and gather food, thereby leaving it largely intact.